Sunday, November 30, 2008

It appears that the tsunami sign terror campaign aimed at Los Angeles beachgoers is being waged by the city of Los Angeles itself. The "TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE" and "TSUNAMI EVACUATION ROUTE" signs that have appeared on the Pacific Coast Highway and its access road intersections are marked "Property City of Los Angeles."

The signs also bear the name "Maneri." The Maneri Sign Company is located in Gardena (City Hall reporters, do your thing...)

Our favorite so far?

At the three-way intersection of the PCH, West Channel Road and Chautauqua Boulevard, where drivers can leave the PCH and head along the low, flat West Channel into Santa Monica, or take a steep, rising hill up into Pacific Palisades.

Chautauqua Boulevard-- the steep, rising hill-- is marked "TSUNAMI EVACUATION ROUTE," as if one fleeing rising waters would need to be directed to choose the road leading to higher ground.

Drivers taking the low, flat West Channel Road route will find a LEAVING TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE sign a couple of hundred yards down the road. That would be a couple of hundred yards away from the beach and the direction of the approaching waters.

An investigation today revealed that the TSUNAMI EVACUATION ROUTE signs are posted along the Pacific Coast Highway before all major access roads north of the California incline in Santa Monica and south of Malibu (Veronique de Turenne of the Here in Malibu site tells us the signs have not been posted in Malibu).

The appearance of the signs has more than a few people wondering why the government would want to drive tourists and beachgoers away from the vast, wide beaches of Will Rogers State Park. There are suspicions that government officials have some advance warning of an impending earthquake or underwater test that would trigger a tsunami-- a long high sea wave caused by an earthquake, submarine landslide or other disturbance.

A 2004 study by researchers at the University of Southern California showed that a 7.6 magnitude earthquake could cause the seafloor under Catalina Island to be thrust upward violently, causing a tsunami along the Southern California coast.

The researchers at the Viterbi School of Engineering described the tsunami hazard associated with offshore faults, including one that lies under Santa Catalina Island, just 25 miles off the Los Angeles coast.

"Catalina Island itself exists due to earthquake-related uplift on a geologic structure known as a restraining bend," said Mark Legg, a geophysicist working with the USC researchers, in the August 2004 issue of Earthquake Spectra.

"Although most faults offshore Los Angeles and Orange counties are mostly strike-slip-- faults that move side to side-- bends in the fault line produce areas where the ground is pushed up during major earthquakes. One of these regions lies directly below Santa Catalina Island."

"Strike slip faults are not straight," added Jose C. Borrero, assistant research professor in the USC Viterbi School. "Bends in the fault trace produce regions where earthquake stresses cause the sea floor to pop up and generate a tsunami".

A random survey of shoppers at the Gelsons supermarket in Pacific Palisades this afternoon found a majority of respondents reacting in bemused disbelief. Said one: "Fear. More fear."

A British priest says Disney is "exploiting spirituality" to sell its products and turning Disneyland into a modern day pilgrimage site.

On the second point, we agree. As regular pilgrims to Disneyland, that is.

Christopher Jamison has launched the attack in a new book about finding happiness. He says that Disney is the "classic example" of consumerism being sold as an alternative to finding happiness in traditional morality.

While the priest acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues it’s all a ploy to persuade people to buy Disney products.

"The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children's world needs Disney.

"So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we'll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present.

"They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland.

"This is the new pilgrimage that children desire, a rite of passage into the meaning of life according to Disney.

"Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products.

"This is basically the commercial exploitation of spirituality."

Jamison is no monastic. He became famous as star of a BBC series called The Monastery.

We'd have to argue that Disneyland, with its messages promoting world unity and the power of imagination, as well as its many rides and attractions that depict the journey through Hell in the journey toward redemption, does serve as an attractive and fulfilling pilgrimage site in a time when the traditional institutions such as the Catholic Church have betrayed the faithful so egregiously. Additionally, the heavy Disneyland security protects children against molesters.

In the book set for publication this week, Jamison also criticizes the obsession with celebrity, which he blames for creating jealousy and a society in which people are dissatisfied with their lives.

"Celebrity news magazines do no apparent external harm, but are a complete waste of interior time and space.

"Envy tells us to stop facing the challenges of the present life and to live in some future fantasy. Such envy drives a large part of our consumer culture."

He says that people need to learn to control their thoughts, and practice more self-discipline and self-control in their lives.

On that point, we must agree.

(Illustration: Wally Wood’s 1967 poster, "Disneyland Memorial Orgy." One of the original Mad Magazine illustrators, Wally Wood published this poster in The Realist. An inside source at Disney told Realist editor Paul Krassner that the company chose not to sue to avoid drawing attention to what could ultimately be a losing battle. However, when an entrepreneur pirated the drawing and sold it as a black light poster, Disney filed suit and ultimately settled out of court.)

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Somebody's found a new way to spoil the Southern California beach experience. One of the kids began pointing it out this week while we were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica towards Malibu. But we didn't get a good look until yesterday, walking down Temescal Canyon Road in Pacific Palisades toward the PCH, headed to Will Rogers State Beach.

There's a new sign posted at the intersection:

ENTERINGTSUNAMIHAZARD ZONE

And on the other side of the street, leading up the hill, a companion sign:

LEAVINGTSUNAMIHAZARD ZONE

TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE? Now there's a good idea! Not RECREATION ZONE or BEACH VOLLEYBALL ZONE, but something sure to send a chill down the spine. And it was certainly good enough to scare the kids who were old enough to read, filling them with worry and dread as they stood on the wide expanse of beach and looked out toward the ocean.

The signs are at every access road to the PCH from Santa Monica at least to Malibu and most likely farther along than that.

That's a lot of signs, and we've got to figure the expenditure was less likely the work of some politically-correct do-gooder inspired by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 (the natural disaster most Americans wouldn't have blinked at, had not a vacationing Western supermodel lost her boyfriend in the waters) than some politician who took advantage of the publicity and projections to slide this pork expenditure to a campaign-contributing sign company.

The "LEAVING TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE" is what gives away the game. It's one thing to post reminders for those approaching the beach. But is it really necessary to find an arbitrary point, a few dozen yards from the PCH, to post a sign to assure the hapless beachgoer, running from the approaching tide, that he's safe? Is that really the boundary of the TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE? What if the person fleeing a tsunami sees the sign, stops running, and is sucked into the surf?

Which leads to other questions: Do government officials know something they're not telling us? Is an earthquake, Pacific Ocean anomaly or ice shelf phenomenon expected to cause a tsunami in the near future? Have the signs been posted to help combat lawsuits from victims and survivors?

No, the real question is why the bureaucrats needed to find another way make people afraid even when they're trying to forget their cares for a couple of hours. Most people headed toward the shores of a great ocean would assume the hazards of big waves, rocks, riptides, sharks, sharp objects in the sand, too much sun, and the sight of fat people on bikinis. That's a lot of signs.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Police in Little Rock, Arkansas have arrested a suspect in the bizarre, savage beating of television news reporter Anne Pressley.

Curtis Lavelle Vance of Marianna, Arkansas was arrested on an "anonymous tip." He looks like a suspect. Except he's got no police record, save for a suspended driver's license from traffic violations and a DUI.

And police have no motive.

Says police lieutenant Terry Hastings:

"It appears to be a random accident. Vance was not stalking.

"We don't think there's any connection there. We think it's an opportunity that he saw. May have seen Anne at a gas station or some place else and simply followed her and took advantage of the situation there. But we can't find any connection between these two at all."

But they have the 28-year suspect, and you can bet they'll find a motive.

Popular, lovely Anne, 26, read and reported the news on KATV. She'd gotten national attention in life for an ambush interview of Vice Peesident Dick Cheney in a gun shop and a role in Oliver Stone's movie, W. She was attacked in her home last month. The attacker broke every bone in her face. Her left hand was also broken, which means she probably fought back. Her mom found her. Anne lived five days but was never able to speak.

Police like to get confessions and convictions in cases like this.

(UPDATE: Police say they've tied Vance to the crime through DNA evidence from a rape case he's being arrested in. They won't say if Anne was raped.)

Thursday, November 27, 2008

It is a world without wit, a world without taste, without cleverness, class, sophistication, irony or intelligence. It is, of course, the crude, nasty and offensive world of the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com. On this special family holiday, we offer the executive overlords at AOL and Time Warner, as well as producers in TMZ's sister news operation CNN, this collection of TMZ headlines from the past 36 hours or so. Just in case they think the camp, inconsequential whitewashed syndicated television version of the site is fooling anyone.

Wow. Get the tapes of last night's Rosie Live special on NBC, pack them up and ship them to the Paley Center for Media or some other broadcasting Hall of Fame because it was so classically wrong it made The Chevy Chase Show look like Curb Your Enthusiasm. We were still getting used to the sight of dour Rosie stuffed into black female drag and dotted with red lipstick when she came out dressed up as an Irish beat cop for a vaudeville skit with a grown woman playing a little girl in stereotypical Pocahontas drag. While Rosie may be working out some recovered memories of being abused by a family member while watching the Abbott & Costello show, it's just lazy to try and pass off an ersatz Provincetown fundraiser as the revival of the network television variety show. Call this the worst network TV special of the new century. We're calling it that and we only watched it on fast-forward. Keep a copy to play over and over and over again...

(UPDATE: A mere 5 million viewers tuned in for the 8 p.m. premiere of “Rosie Live,” with the program earning a 1.2 preliminary adults 18-49 rating. The telecast matched ABC’s recently-canceled “Pushing Daisies” as the night's lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.)

Monday, November 24, 2008

Dr. Crystal Bailey Gary and her husband Dr. Thomas Gary are family physicians who run the North Georgia Family Medicine center in Blairsville, Georgia. Dr. Crystal is one of those special people, dedicating her life to doing vitally important work and making other people's lives better.

And who'd think she was inspired by tabloid?

Dr. Crystal is the daughter of a legend: cameraman and mentor Lewis Bailey, who's guided the shoots and made the name of many a producer in tabloid television and network news (you'd surprised at how the two intertwine, then again if you read Tabloid Baby, you wouldn't be). Many of those producers knew Crystal back in the day as Lewis' fetching young assistant.

Dr. Crystal writes, and writes quite well, about the roots of her raising on the NGFM site:

"There is something to be said for kids 'from the sticks.' Growing up in the shadows of the Appalachian Mountains afforded me opportunities that others might consider obstacles. Life blesses some folks with silver spoons while others it simply blesses. I know that I belong in the latter category.

"The second of five children, I grew up where I was born-- in the tiny town of Young Harris, Georgia. As far as my memory will stretch, I recall that my parents always reinforced with my siblings and me a deep respect for hard work, persistence, and dedication. We balanced our summers working in the garden or water-sealing our driveway with exploring the surrounding woods and creeks. Any given day might find us decked out in makeshift 'jungle attire' which closely resembled my father’s safari hat and faded Muppet-Baby sheets, and armed with nothing more than a pair of trusty contraband scissors to ward off the perils of the forest. If the mountains of North Georgia could talk, they would tell tales of our imaginative exploits that paralleled the equally captivating adventures beamed to us from our analog satellite television receiver.

"In spite of our inherent rural ways, technology like the satellite dish, played a large role in our existence. My father owned a television production business that comprised a camera crew and equipment. I was almost thirteen when I began filling in for sick crew members, working as a sound technician and grip on location for such productions as Entertainment Tonight, 60 Minutes, and Dateline. These experiences exposed me to a world that even the most cosmopolitan person rarely encounters.

"For instance, how many other people can plead guilty to accidentally whacking Patrick Swayze in the head with a boom microphone? It did not take many production shoots with Hard Copy for me to learn that life encompasses a wide variety of people, all of whom have singularly interesting personal stories. I listened to the diversified complaints, questions, and afflictions that dominated the lives of these storytellers. These experiences opened my eyes to the burden that one ailment or worry can create. That knowledge gave direction to my life.

"From an early age I learned to appreciate the uniqueness of each individual. After learning to listen, I became interested in doing more than just lending an ear to these personal life stories-- I wanted to intervene. A profound respect and love for human life drives my desire to help improve the lives of those around me. What better role than 'family doc' enables a person to fulfill this aspiration? Not to mention, something tells me that I might consider staying away from any career choices that involve boom microphones.

"Thus, after twenty-odd years of stumbling through an amalgamation of turnip greens and UHF cables, I can honestly say that I was born to be a family doctor."

Tabloid Baby pal, contributor, columnist and TV, movie and music video star Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D. takes a fateful ride in a hearse, looks at the phenomenon of frisbee starfish and goes all Food Network in these latest installments of the Realm of Bizarre News.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Back in March 2001, Tabloid Baby author Burt Kearns was the guest on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio program, talking about tabloid television, reality TV, UFOs, network television conspiracies, and his work as executive producer of the then already-legendary TV series Strange Universe-- not mention the groundbreaking, expose and memoir that had network personalities and execs alike scurrying from their pasts. Burt and Art took calls, sold a few books and stayed up all night.

Though Bell has since handed over his show to George Noory, vintage Art Bell segments are broadcast on the weekend and this Saturday-- tomorrow-- Art Bell: Somewhere in Time reruns the four-hour Burt Kearns and Tabloid Baby show.

It runs 6 to 10 pm Pacific Time.

Check your local listings.

And stay tuned here for news on Tabloid Baby the book...

A tip of the Tabloid Baby hat to Tabloid Baby pal Justin Peach for the tip...

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Thursday, November 13, 2008

We look forward with eagerness to see Quantum of Solace when it opens tomorrow. In tribute, we lead you back to our January post on the latest Bond Girl, Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian actress who's gone above and beyond in her dedication to 007, having received death threats from terror groups in Russia for appearing in a movie about "an enemy of the people" and who is the nudest, kinkiest Bond Girl, yet, even wilder than her down-and-dirty predecessor, Eva Green. Check her out here. And here. And here.

Chez Jay on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica only looks like a dive bar, a hideaway joint in plain sight in which to get a drink while everyone else is waiting for a table and nobody bothers you. It's where businessmen, beachcombers, showbiz types share the tight bar. It was where the Hudson Brothers wrote Rendezvous with Bruce Johnston. The place has one of those half-doors with a top half that could be opened while the bottom stays closed. We remember one of our pals walking in, not noticing the lower half was shut and doing a complete flip onto the sawdust floor. It could have been Bob O'Brien or Eames Yates or Nicky. Anyone with a memory out there? It may have gotten a mention in Tabloid Baby. In 1991, Jay's mother Alice, who helped run the place, was run over by a Range Rover driven by Joel Shukovsky, the husband of Diane English the Murphy Brown producer. A celebration of Jay Fiondella will take place on Sunday, December 6th at 2 pm, a good time to drink.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Sarah Palin is getting her ass licked by Greta van Susteren on Fox News right now, putting a dreary, whiny and too-late spin on events in an attempt to polish a comic book image that withered in exposure to the sunlight, lying about her wardrobe spending sprees and clouding the facts about her mayoral book-banning attempts (by claiming that she was accused of trying to ban Harry Potter before it was published. She wasn't).

But what's most amusing is that in addressing most every scandalous issue regarding her candidacy and record, from the questions about the true maternity of her Down's Syndrome son, Trig (questions that were raised in the Alaska press long before her dangerous selection as vice presidential candidate), to her ignorance of world affairs, she blames "bloggers" in their "pyjamas" in "their parents' basement" for stirring up, and making up, controversy.

Hey Sarah, we're naked. And drinking vodka. So we'll take that as a compliment for picking up where the lazy "mainstream" media fell off.

And we'll take the credit for doing our part in saving America from you.

HELP HAITI

TEXT "HAITI" TO 90999 to give $10 to the Red Cross (click photo for more aid groups)

GET UPDATES

About Me

DANNY GANS

Click the photo for our complete coverage of the death and legacy of the Las Vegas superstar

Watch:

Read:

"Sad, funny, undeniably authentic, Tabloid Baby tells the tale of what befell too much of mainstream television news over the past couple of decades as the bad drove out the good."
--Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes

"Burt was there for the birthing of tabloid, he became the heart of the genre, and now he's written the bible."
--Maury Povich

"Dear Burt: While you always had quite a flair for the dramatic, you never had much regard for the truth... Apparently you can't be bothered to read anything carefully. Maybe that is why you, like O'Reilly, make half your crap up.
Glad to hear you finally got sober." -- Barry Nolan, 04.12.08